This represented the debut Lobotomy Room
at what should hopefully be its permanent new home - the bijou Art Deco surroundings
of Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston! (OK, the Dalston/Stoke Newington
border if you want to be pedantic). The
place is exquisite: so frou frou and chi chi it feels like you’re inside a silver-and-blue
1930s jewellery box. Glancing around, you half expect Jean Harlow to sashay in
at any moment and order a Tom Collins at the bar.

/ A shot I snapped of Emerald Fontaine in action at the Time for Tease tent at Bestival in 2012 /

The boss woman behind Fontaine’s is Miss
Ruby Martin, who I first encountered in the Dr Sketchy days when she used to bump
and grind as a burlesque showgirl under the show biz name Emerald Fontaine. (We bonded over our shared mania for
everything John Waters). Ruby has a great eye for luxe details: who knew I’d ever
wind up DJ’ing at a place with candles, fresh flowers and silver-painted palm
trees? She even provided me with my own lit-up pink flamingo in the DJ booth
for extra-filthy Divine inspiration. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll
be there in the air-conditioned darkened womb of Fontaine's basement Bamboo Lounge the
last Friday of every month for the rest of 2015. Watch your step coming down those steps after a few drinks! Just think – I’ll be dragging
this impeccably elegant cocktail lounge down to my level!

/ DJ'ing isn't a terribly photogenic thing: me at work /

The Lobotomy Room re-launch
was a bit more low-key (as in: sparsely-attended!) than I ideally would have
liked. It coincided with the weekend of Pride and Glastonbury – who knows? But the
elite group of Lobotomy Room stalwarts (and some new faces) present were hip,
enthusiastic - and most importantly danced to my putrid selections of musical vintage
sleaze. Onwards and upwards! The latest incarnation of Lobotomy Room is off to
a promising start.

/ The bartenders in the Bamboo Lounge - intoxicating in more ways than one /

Tuesday, 23 June 2015

(In preparation for swapping my creaky 8-year old PC for a gleaming new laptop, I'm combing through and sorting old files of ancient photos and documents and deleting crap. I came across this review I wrote of John Waters' 2010 book Role Models. It appeared on the alternative art and culture Nude website at the time, but that was yanked down a few years ago now, so I'm posting it here for posterity).

There’s an illuminating anecdote in Prince of Puke John
Waters’ new book. In 1957 aged 11 he shoplifted a Little Richard record. Sneaking it onto the hi-fi at his
grandmother’s house, Waters felt a spasm of pleasure at the horrified reaction when
The Bronze Liberace started wailing “Lucille”: “In one magical moment, every
fear of my white family had been laid bare: an uninvited, screaming flamboyant
black man was in the living room.” His impulse to épater le bourgeois was already seething even in childhood.

Role Models profiles
the various personalities who've warped the wworld-view of cinema’s trash
virtuoso, encompassing people from fashion, music, pornography, literature –
plus a former member of the Manson Family. Most interesting are the freaks from
subterranean Baltimore who anticipate the gallery of grotesques from Waters’
films: a teenage drag queen called
Pencil (“rabidly enticing despite his repellent packaging”); Zorro the alcoholic stripper who’d stumble onto the stage already naked snarling, “What
the fuck are you looking at?”

Waters shares his thoughts on modern art (“Isn't that the
job of contemporary art? To infuriate?”), his ideal death (spontaneous
combustion), a social history of his favourite squalid Baltimore dive bars, his
philosophy of success (“True success is figuring out your life and career so
you never have to be around jerks”),even his beauty tips (his signature moustache is augmented with Maybelline Expert Eyes in Velvet Black eyeliner).

For Waters, reading Tennessee Williams revealed, “There was
another world ... a universe filled with special people who didn't want to be a
part of this dreary conformist life that I was told I had to join.” For many of
us, Waters himself has served a similar role. Trenchant but generous, Role Models reads like missives from a wise
uncle for the maladjusted who counsels, “Make friends with your neuroses.”

All of the above photos are swiped from the current issue of i-D magazine. It's a must-have, featuring a lovingly-done interview and fashion spread / homage (by Alasdair McLellan) to cult cinema king and “the peoples’ pervert” John Waters shot on location in Baltimore. It incorporates portraits of Waters, his great regular character actress Mink Stole, a shot of Divine’s tombstone and a fashion model clad in Miuccia Prada’s spring/summer 15 Miu Miu range (inspired by Waters’ 1974 masterpiece Female Trouble) and styled to evoke bad girl Cookie Mueller (1949-1989). The hair and make-up people nicely capture Mueller’s tousled beehive hair-do and winged Brigitte Bardot-style black liquid eyeliner – but the model is considerably softer-looking than the actual tough-as-nails Cookie, and doesn't have Mueller’s home-made tattoos.Read my epic 2010 interview with Waters here.

Thursday, 11 June 2015

/ The human face of Cockabilly: Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953). Brando and
his biker gang The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in juvenile delinquent flick The Wild One remain the absolute
visual / sartorial ideal for male rockabillies today in the way that, say,
Bettie Page or Mamie Van Doren do for female rockabilly kittens. Considering
the film dates from 1953, it’s actually pre-rock’n’roll (in the cafe where the
bikers hang out, the jukebox blares loud, frantic bebop jazz). Brando in
this film anticipates punk, when it still meant someone who was raped in
prison. Plus: for me surly young Brando in his biker cap and leather jacket is
one of the most (homo) erotic images of all time /

This was the first Cockabilly since April (right after I got
back from the annual Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender). It felt great to be back behind the decks
at The George & Dragon. Here’s what I played in my hour-long set:

Monday, 1 June 2015

Since getting back from my US trip to Viva Las Vegas and New Orleans, I’m a good ten “art projects” behind. So I’m only just now getting
around to blogging my set list from my DJ’ing guest spot at Vip Vop, DJ Gavin A
GoGo’s vicious little rock’n’roll honky tonk night at The Stag’s Head in Haggerston.

Sunday 3 May 2015 fell on a bank holiday – bliss! That meant
I could properly party and let it all hang out without worrying about having a
hangover at work on Monday. And boy, did I! The festivities started at The Glory in Haggerston – London’s new epicentre of gay Bohemia and definitely one
of my “happiest places” in London these days.
The Glory celebrated Bank Holiday Sunday with a trashy, boozy afternoon hillbilly
barn dance. The proposed dress code was red and white gingham shirts (I dutifully
wore mine!). Think people drinking beer while sitting on bales of straw, the DJs
playing kitsch country and western music (as Pal and I entered, the first song
I heard was by the sublime Bobbi Gentry; I just about jizzed), line dancing and
the reliably anarchic and sewer-mouthed host John Sizzle dragged up as Dolly
Parton.

The most glamorous attendee was veteran
New York cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond, who I’ve revered since the Kiki and
Herb days. It’s been a good few years since I’ve seen Bond perform and v [the pronoun Bond prefers over "him" or "her"] looks
pretty sensational these days, with a long straight mane of blonde hair
reminiscent of Nico on the cover of her 1967 Chelsea Girl album. After a few beers
I plucked up the liquid courage to approach Bond and tell v about the first
time I ever saw v perform: it was 1999 at the sadly defunct queer punk club
Squeezebox in New York. Bond sang Marianne Faithfull’s “Broken English.” Bond’s
eyes lit up at the memory of Squeezebox and asked, “Was I any good?”

From there, considerably refreshed after several hours at
The Glory, Pal and I walked around the corner to The Stag’s Head for Vip Vop. DJ Gavin AGoGo has an absolutely killer night
and it was a pleasure to be a part of it. As you can see from the berserk
photos, the night descended into a total rockabilly booze party bacchanal. (There’s no
way I could have made it to work the next day). I played two sets alternating
with Gavin. At one point the barmaid was threatening to close the place at 11
pm. Gavin found the manager and persuaded him to let us continue to play until
midnight. That explains my second shorter set. I think I’ll let the photos do
the talking now.

Saturday, 23 May 2015

“This decaying city has a hypnotic aspect that leads me
through its streets ...” City of Night. John Rechy, 1963

“I was drawn to New Orleans’ decaying beauty, ripe with
overgrown vegetation which both blossomed and rotted in the very same breath
... spellbound by the decadent architecture, the elaborate sprinkling of
wrought iron balconies ...” Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary. Lydia Lunch, 1997
A riot of revelry, romance and roaring laughter seen mid historical hotspots in the city that care forgot - New Orleans! (Note: this blog represents the second installment of my April 2015 US trip, picking up the action from my earlier Viva Las Vegas 2015 posting)

Monday 6 April 2015

I arrived in the torrid voodoo realm of New Orleans ‘round
midnight, sun-baked, dehydrated, chap-lipped and hung-over. My friend Kevin met
me at the airport and drove me to his place in Mid-City. My first glimpse of
New Orleans was by night, the car zipping past ghostly Southern Gothic
architecture, weeping willows and moon-lit tombstones. I crashed-out on Kevin’s
sofa and slept like a corpse straight through until Tuesday morning.

Tuesday 7 April 2015

/ Kevin shares my affection for Liz Renay - burlesque performer, B-movie actress, naive outsider artist, gangster’s moll, authoress of trashy volumes of memoirs like My Face for the World to See and My First 2000 Men and all-round super vixen. She’ll forever be remembered as the petulant lesbian murderess Muffy St Jacques in the 1977 John Waters film Desperate Living. Kevin has her full literary canon. (Check out his atomic-era chrome and formica kitchen table!) /During the day Kevin took me sight-seeing by car, exploring neighbourhoods
Mid-City (where he’s based), the Treme, Faubourg Marigny, Garden District,
Uptown and the French Quarter. New Orleans’ humidity made me swoon like a
southern belle. (Rest assured I channeled the demented
melancholy of a Tennessee Williams heroine the whole time I was there).

Sampling New Orleans’ unique regional cuisine was a
priority. The first thing I ate in New Orleans was dense, smoky Cajun jambalaya
(with a side of fried pickles – as addictive as hits off a crack pipe) at local
diner Liuzza's by the Track in Mid-City. I was practically purring with
pleasure. (One of the waitresses was drinking a Tab. I haven’t seen a can of
Tab since the 1980s).

From there we drove past the stately, gracious old-money
historic mansions in St Charles Avenue and Esplanade Avenue. Some even had pillars
in the front, like Tara in Gone with the Wind. But even New Orleans’ more
modest architecture is distinctive and fascinating: I want to live in a
lavender, sea shell pink or sea foam aqua house. Even the shotgun shacks looked
alluring to me.

/ Me gurning amidst the crypts of Lafayette Cemetery. (In every single photo taken there, I'm chewing a wasp. Seriously. This was the best one) /

What else to wear when prowling amidst decaying crypts but a Vampira
t-shirt? (Ed Wood’s working title for Plan 9 from Outer Space was Grave Robbers
from Outer Space, after all). This is the historic Lafayette Cemetery No 1 in
The Garden City - famous from the LSD hippie freak-out scene in the film Easy
Rider (1969). (A quick Google search now verifies I’m wrong and that scene was
filmed at another New Orleans graveyard, St.Louis CemeteryNo 1. I was invoking the spirit of Karen Black
nonetheless). Kevin pointed out to me the “voodoo offerings” left on some of
the graves. How fascinating! Authentic voodoo rituals in twenty first century
New Orleans! When I asked who actually practices this, his disillusioning reply
was, “Mainly white women” – which conjured images of fried Courtney Love or Steve
Nicks-style hippie mamas with perms wearing tie dye sundresses.

/ Catholic kitsch at Lafayette Cemetery No 1 /

Speaking of voodoo, back in Mid-City, I bought some candles
at F&F Botanica, an authentic Puerto Rican voodoo emporium. I will be
officially converting to the Santeria religion next. (My Brazilian ex-boyfriend used to tell me
about Candomblé,
the Brazilian variation of Santeria).I yearned to take a photo of the
spectacular display of giant kitsch plaster of Paris statues of Our Lady of
Guadalupe and Yemoja that greet you as you enter, but was afraid of seeming
disrespectful. This is a place for genuine voodoo practitioners, after all.
The friendly sales assistant behind the counter complimented my Vampira t-shirt
and he and Kevin quickly established they both know horror author (and long-time
New Orleans resident) Poppy Z Brite (who now lives as a trans man, re-named
Billy Martin). In retrospect, he probably would have let me take a photo.

/The voodoo candles I bought at F&F Botanica in New Orleans on the left. The skull glass is a Viva Las Vegas souvenir from a few years ago (everything tastes better drunk from a skull) /

Afterwards we knocked-back late-afternoon beers at Pal’s Lounge, a nicely atmospheric and laid-back little Mid-City dive bar. At one
point the sassy female bartender referred to me as "sweet tits” (while
asking me to flip the sign in the front door from “Closed” to “Open”). Thus
christened, I felt like I had truly arrived in New Orleans.

That night we had dinner and cocktails at the mondo exotica BeachbumBerry's Latitude 29 Tiki lounge at The Bienville House Hotel in the French
Quarter. My potent Mai Tai arrived with a sprig of mint and a hibiscus flower
floating on top.

En route to Latitude 29 we cut through the tourist trap end
of Bourbon Street which the travel guides urge you to avoid. Talk about squalor! I caught a glimpse of a wino with a sun-dried scabby
face weaving down the street towards me. He was shirtless and had scrawled on
his stomach with a black Sharpie “Can you suck this?” with an arrow pointing
crotch-wards. Hey, sometimes the direct approach works. Vive le sleaze!

We explored the French Quarter on foot, Kevin pointing out
the apartment building where Tennessee Williams once lived. (Williams called
New Orleans his “spiritual home” and of course many of his plays are set there).
We downed more beers at punk-y bar and music venue One Eyed Jacks. I loved the
black velvet “nudie cutie” paintings in gilt frames, flocked crimson wallpaper
and vintage brothel-style decor.

/ Above and below: bordello decor at One Eyed Jacks /

From there we well and truly sampled New Orleans low life at
The Double Play and The Corner Pocket (both known to be personal favourites of John Waters when he visits
New Orleans – is there any higher recommendation?). Sampled? “Luxuriated” or
even “wallowed” would be more apt. I like my low life low and both places lived
down to my expectations. The Double Play is a stark, hard-edged dive bar straight out of an
Edward Hopper painting. Its clientele is
primarily trans prostitutes, junkies, teenage male hustlers in the Joe Dallesandro Trash
tradition and the chicken hawk older men who love them. Try to imagine where the present-day versions
of Tralala or drag queen prostitute Georgette from Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to
Brooklyn would cadge drinks. In a jaw-dropping understatement the website Gay New Orleans.com describes The Double Play as “a rather "wild"
neighbourhood bar that is frequented by every kind of person imaginable. Whatever
is your scene, you'll find companions here.” Sweetly, the mature white grandpa making
out with a mocha-skinned black kid straight out of his teens had certainly
found his kind of companion. The tough-as-nails characters and
anything-could-happen atmosphere at The Double Play was enthralling. If I lived
in New Orleans, I’d be there soaking up the ambiance every weekend.

The Corner Pocket was reportedly the inspiration for the
squalid gay bar The Fudge Palace in Waters’ 1998 movie Pecker. If you've seen
that film you’ll know what to anticipate: a stable of cute rough trade
gay-for-pay / heteroflexible tattooed go-go boys in their underwear “dance”,
crotch-thrust and twerk on the bar-top with their candy jiggling right at your
eye-level. The tradition is to cram $1
bills down the waistband of the dancers’ underwear and enjoy a quick grope in
the process. (It’s bad etiquette to sit at the bar and not do this). I didn't actually witness any tea-bagging, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was on the
menu. A hardboiled Corner Pocket regular
seated next to me filled me in on the ropes: the boys’ shifts finish at 3 am.
If you want one of them to leave with you before then, slip the bartender $30.
The going rate to spend the night with a Corner Pocket go-go dancer is $200.
You can find their online profiles on rentboy.com. Anyway, the semi-naked guys
(a wide variety of types, some perhaps a bit stoned) were friendly and adorable
(why oh why hasn't Bruce Weber swooped down to shoot these beauties for an edgy
homoerotic L'Uomo Vogue fashion
shoot or a Boys of The Corner Pocket calendar? I would buy it!) and The Corner
Pocket is a deliciously rancid good time. Photography is understandably strictly
verboten there but check out the Corner Pocket’s regularly-updated Facebook page
for shots of the dancers.

/ Typical view from the bar of The Corner Pocket: I swiped this pic from their Facebook page. I definitely remember this diminutive Mohawked heartthrob from when Kevin and I visited /

At both The Double Play and The Corner pocket I felt like I
was living John Rechy's novel City of Night and I reveled in it. The French Quarter gay bars Rechy cites by
name (The Rocking Times, Les Petits, Sandy-Vees’s, Cindy’s, Les Deux Freres) are
lost to the mists of time, but otherwise the New Orleans gay scene is
remarkably unchanged since he chronicled his restless beatnik bar-hopping, S&M
hustling misadventures and transvestite encounters in 1963. In 2015 in London every last vestige of
sleaze have been well and truly stamped-out. It was gratifying to see proper
old-school filth still thrives in modern vice city New Orleans.

Wednesday 8 April

/ I suspect this Eric Stanton illustration depicts documentary realism of what New Orleans looks like during Mardi Gras /

On my second full day in New Orleans I wilted in
the sun and got fed-up with throngs of slow-moving, mouth-breathing bovine
tourists in the French Quarter. (Yes, I know I'm a tourist, too - but a
fast-walking and impatient one!). Kevin warned me the annual French Quarter Festival
would begin while I was in town and to anticipate a crush of people arriving.
He wasn't kidding: when I got on the streetcar on Canal Street it was groaning
with people and the Quarter was much more difficult to negotiate. The French Quarter Fest is relatively
small-scale – I can’t imagine how New Orleans residents cope during Mardi Gras
or the Jazz Festival.

/ French Quarter architecture /

/ Above and below: ultra-kitsch window display at Head Quarters on Dauphine Street in the French Quarter. (Think: The Lipstick Beauty Salon in the John Waters film Female Trouble). Kevin gets his hair cut here /

I’d intended to eat lunch at the historic Napoleon
House in the French Quarter, but it was packed-solid (a coach load of senior
citizen tourists arrived just moments before me) so I gave up. Starving and
annoyed, I backtracked to The Clover Grill to drink some black coffee and eat
French fries to tide me over in the meantime. A kitsch Jayne Mansfield-sugar-pink-hued retro diner (operational since 1939), Clover Grill is open 24-hours
and a regular haunt for drunk and hungry late-night gay clubbers craving grease
and carbs. The list of requests in menu -
“We don’t eat in your bed; please don’t sleep at our table”. “No talking to
yourself.” “Keep both hands on the table” - hints at the raucous behaviour of
their average patron. Sadly, there were
no tipsy drag queens still wearing last night’s make-up while I was there: just
an average mid-Western looking family at the next table.

A friend recommended I drink at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop in the French Quarter. The history of the tavern is certainly
fascinating: the building – a
low-ceilinged brick cottage – dates back to the 18th century, is one of the oldest surviving structures in
New Orleans and is reportedly one of the oldest operating bars in the US. It was cool and dark in there, but the ultra-straight
crowd wasn't terribly inspiring and the loud 1980s mainstream rock music (U2,
Guns’N’Roses) meant I couldn't finish my beer and depart fast enough.

/ Interior of Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop /

Next I sank another beer just a few doors away at the much
more simpatico Cafe Lafitte in Exile. It’s a pretty unexceptional middle-of-the-road
gay bar today, but it’s also an LGBT historical landmark: the oldest continuously
operating gay bar in the country. The likes of Tennessee Williams and Truman
Capote were regulars in the 1950s. Apparently the balcony is beautiful, but when
I was there it was daytime and it was shut, unfortunately. Big video screens
above the bar play pop videos: judging by the content (“No More Drama” by Mary
J Blige, Whitney Houston’s “My Love is Your Love”) the playlist hasn't been
refreshed in at least fifteen years. No matter: the bartender was friendly, the
patrons were boozy and mellow and the beer was frosty.

Re-tracing my steps, I finally managed to eat my first
muffuletta (to a soundtrack of soaring classical music) at the elegant shabby-chic
Napoleon House. It was orgasmic and worth the wait. When I was paying the bill the waiter clocked
my accent and asked where I was from. Weirdly, when I explained I was Canadian but
a long-term UK resident, he suddenly turned lascivious and started aggressively inquiring what Canadian girls and British girls are like. Yikes! I politely made my excuses and split.

/ Muffuletta sandwich (a New Orleans delicacy) at the historic Napoleon House in the French Quarter /

/ Hoochie mama! Chris Owens in her youth /Burlesque showgirl, chanteuse, nightclub proprietoress and
plastic surgery enthusiast Chris Owens – still sporting hot- pants and kinky
boots and crotch-thrusting onstage at 83-years
old – has been a local celebrity and fixture in New Orleans since the early
1960s. Kevin and I contemplated going to Owens’ club in The French Quarter
where she still regularly performs but didn't make it unfortunately. Her website (which looks like it hasn't been updated since the 1990s) shrieks in
upper-case some pretty remarkable claims: “CHRIS OWENS is a SINGING AND
DANCING INTERNATIONAL SENSATION! Her performance is the MOST ELECTRIFYING
ONE-WOMAN SHOW ON THE ENTERTAINMENT SCENE today, set to such musical
genres as jazz, blues, rock, country western, top 40 variety and international,
to name a few. She is a DAZZLING, TALKING, SINGING, DANCING, SPARKLING,
EXPLOSION OF PERPETUAL MOTION. Her glowing personality and high-energy
performance sweep the audience right into the tempo of the show. Those that
have been entertained by CHRIS OWENS never tire of her and KEEP
COMING BACK FOR MORE, NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, WEEK AFTER WEEK!” Who could possibly resist
that? Apparently Owens sprinkles her Vegas-style lounge act with covers of Lady
GaGa, Shania Twain and Jennifer Lopez songs to keep contemporary. I’ll make investigating it a priority if I return to New Orleans. But I
did snap this wildly idealised statue of a maracas-wielding La Owens at the New
Orleans Musical Legends Park. She’s in good company, surrounded by statues of luminaries
like Louis Prima and Fats Domino.

That night Kevin and I went to Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge in Uptown. We were joined by Pete, the brains behind
superb vintage homo porn tumblr blog Cultural Dictionary of Dick (do not click this link if you're at work!). When I
learned he was based in New Orleans I grabbed the opportunity to hang out with
him (and pour some beers down his neck). Snake and Jake’s is surely one of the
world's greatest dive bars. For one thing - it's located in a dilapidated shack!
It's permanently pitch-black inside, lit only by red fairy lights. (In fact
they’re Christmas tree lights. There are Christmas decorations up all year,
hence the name). Snake and
Jake's looks just like something out of Mortville, the derelict criminal shanty
town in John Waters' 1977 lesbian punk film Desperate Living. (Snake even boasts a raspy-voiced, swear-y
butch female bartender in the Mole McHenry tradition). It's actually situated
in quite a nice and affluent residential area - the neighbours must be
horrified by it. The smoking ban is only just now taking effect in New Orleans
so that means Snake and Jake’s patrons will basically be standing around and
smoking right in residents' front yards until the early hours - which might prove
awkward. As you can see from above pic, the exterior looks tiny (and bear in
mind I'm only 5'6"!). But once
you're inside Snake and Jake's it doesn't feel exceptionally cramped or
low-ceilinged. The graffiti-scrawled men's room was like something out of CBGBs.

/ Me inside Snake and Jake's - truly one of the happiest places on earth /

/ Canine customers at Snake and Jake's /

Thursday 9
April

/ Atomic-era vintage sleaze on Bourbon Street. I would love to have caught "The Cat Girl" Lilly Christine's act! /

By my last full day in New Orleans I had indulged in so much day-time bar-hopping
in the French Quarter I was starting to recognise the faces of the winos, wizened
barflies and rent boys when I passed them on the street. (I spotted one particularly
cute scruffily-bearded, sandy-haired young hustler I'd seen playing pool at The Double Play on Tuesday
night walking past Cafe Lafitte in Exile holding hands with a man old enough to
be his grandfather- truly another City of Night moment).

Committed to ticking New Orleans culinary specialties off one-by-one,
I ate gumbo at Eat New Orleans on Dauphine Street. It was heavenly. (By then I'd already devoured a shrimp po'boy. I left New
Orleans having never managed to eat red beans and rice or a beignet or drink a Sazerac - another
reason to come back!).

Afterwards I sank a beer at trashy compact gay bar The Golden Lantern (dubbed “The Golden
Latrine” by locals). It’s known for
hosting drag performances by night. Of course I was there in the daytime – but I
did pass the sparkly little stage en route to men’s room. I also paid one last visit to the Double Play – nicely shabby and
peeling by daylight.

/ Above: this campy homoerotic poster hangs in the men's room of The Golden Lantern, probably intact since the 1970s or 80s. Weirdly enough, this picture cropped up on my tumblr feed a few weeks later /

That night Pete and I went to Paulie’s Pub and Restaurant, a weird
little queer punk bar where they were blasting surf music at ear-splitting
volume. (In my dreams Paulie's would have made an ideal Lobotomy Room venue).

Friday 10
April

I flew back to London that afternoon. En route to the airport the affable cab driver
confided his life story. He came to New Orleans from Pakistan thirty years
earlier and now couldn't imagine living anywhere else. He was displaced by
Hurricane Katrina but returned as quickly as he possibly could. He swore to me
I’d revisit. “Once you've been to New Orleans, you’ll definitely come back.” He
may well be right.